Danny Is Stuck In Real Life
by sorcerousfang
Summary: Or, in which an unsuspecting hotel owner discovers that she likes her nephew's favorite show a little more than she realized, teens with ghost powers are still teens but with bigger problems, and reality is full of incredibly blurry lines.
1. Chapter 1

**Well I'm making a mistake and posting a new, multi-chapter story before finishing the handful of other multi-chapter stories I have going.**

 **Oh well.**

 **Some time ago, I was reading through an author profile on here and said author had a list of writing challenges. I've never done a challenge, except for my own that I come up with and tend to call ideas, and I wasn't expecting one to jump out at me and demand me to write it. It just…happened. So boom, I'm neglecting my other stories because right now my brain is stuck on this:** Danny Phantom has been sighted in the Real World and needs help getting back home. Oddly enough, he's only been able to land on buildings that are 10 floors high or taller. Otherwise, he's stuck in the air, and hasn't be able to revert to human safely because of it. The only ones that have even a chance of seeing him are those that are fans of the show he's from.

 **Thank you, random author, for driving my brain crazy with this for several years. I hope I didn't take too many liberties with it, and that this is an interesting enough interpretation to keep you reading through to the end. Also, I was a total nimrod and didn't write down your name. If you happen to be said author, please let me know, so this author can properly credit you.**

 **To the rest of you, thanks for your curiosity. Please enjoy this in sporadic updates, random chapter lengths, and otherwise inconsistent attention spans.**

* * *

On the roof of my hotel, I had an odd encounter.

When I say _my_ hotel, I do literally mean _the hotel that I own_ , and when I say _odd_ encounter, I really mean _frankly impossible_.

I was pretty sure I had had one too many drinks that night. That had to be it.

There was absolutely no other explanation for why I was watching a lightly-glowing teenage boy observe my donor party from his position ten feet off of the ground.

No one else seemed aware of the entity but me, which both affirmed to my saner self that the mead I'd chosen over the white wine was a bad decision, and gave one more thing for that bitter voice in the back of my head to check off of the insanity list. That bitter voice had been growing steadily louder in my thirty-seven years of existence. I was pretty sure it was out to get me tonight.

I believed in the supernatural. Just because I'd never seen a ghost didn't mean they didn't exist. That I'd seen a ghost watching the people mill about the party with an expression fit for an annoyed and mildly perplexed teen wasn't all that impossible. Incredibly unlikely and absolutely strange, but not impossible.

What made this _frankly impossible_ was that this ghost happened to be a very specific ghost, and a very specific tune related to said specific ghost was stuck in my head.

 _"He could walk through walls, disappear, and fly…"_

I turned promptly away from the cartoon ghost child and tried to distract myself with conversations. It didn't work very well. I still tried.

For three days after, I went out to the roof again in a quest to prove my sanity. Part of me would cheer when I would look and find nothing in that spot where the boy once was. I'd check in the morning, at night, during lunch, and there was no sign of him any longer. I finally announced to myself that I had indeed been delusional, and went back to my normal routine of room inspections, staff management, and the occasional meet-and-greet with the more well-known of my guests.

The fourth night, I felt like mead again (the stuff is glorious). The fourth night, he showed up again.

I spat out the drink and ran back inside to the safety of my penthouse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Do expect these chapters to be mostly short.**

* * *

I didn't go outside the next night.

I stayed in. After I had made sure everything was well-stocked and the staff didn't need anything more from me, I went back to the top floor, poured a can of Spaghetti-Os into a bowl, and promptly forgot about it sitting in the microwave for an hour.

My computer had distracted me. Being the internet where you could find just about anything and wind up in strange places quickly, my Google search of _recall on Ambrosia's Mead_ (which turned up nothing) had somehow led me to a video of a recording of a TV show I hadn't seen since my last holiday three months ago.

There was no mistaking that what I saw out on the roof and what I saw on this video were the same, though.

 _"Going Ghost!"_

Danny Phantom, aka Danny Fenton, the cartoon teenage hero with ghost powers, was floating around outside of my hotel.

Of course, he looked much less like a cartoon and more like one of the kids on their way to the yearly anime convention down the road, but unless some poor teen had actually died dressed up as the cartoon hero, my alcohol-induced hallucination was a spot-on representation of what the character would look like as a real boy. There was nothing flat, he had realistic dimensions and proportions, and the only weird part about him was the whole 'glow and float' thing he had going on. Shit, his white hair even looked natural, color aside.

The last I had seen of the character was over the Easter holiday, when my family had convinced me to make it home and I'd bonded with my brother's seven-year-old son over his favorite cartoon channel. It just so happened the station was running a marathon of the show, and I might have become invested in the boy's struggle to keep up with school, his long line of enemies, and hide his secret identity from a grossly unobservant community.

I'm kind of a closet cartoon fan. I think my nephew picked up on that.

It might have been the forced puns (my weakness), or the characters – wait, real people? – or just the premise of the show, but whatever it was pulled me in. I got angry at certain individuals, laughed with others, and cringed when the boy's evil future-self did some pretty creepy things in the finale (hello my nightmare for the next week).

It apparently stayed with me, because every once in a while I would find myself with the theme song stuck in my head – to the displeasure of my staff – and now I was hallucinating a realistic version of the boy floating around in the sky above the building.

I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoyed watching this series. I carefully studied a few episodes I scrounged up on the internet as my cat, who was perfectly content to sit around unhelpfully, gave me pointed looks any time I laughed or otherwise reacted to what I was seeing. I gave him a few myself every once in a while, daring him to judge me.

One episode I found was an old one from before the hero emblem the writers decided a bit late to incorporate was added. Another showcased a time when his best girl friend (not yet _girlfriend_ , though I remember the thought _just kiss her already_ going through my mind during the marathon) decided to protest a beauty pageant by participating in it, and the last involved a lot of traveling though doors in the Ghost Zone to track down a certain other half-ghost.

A thought occurred to me after that one. I decided to go to bed before my delusion gained more footing.


	3. Chapter 3

The sixth night, I went back out on the roof without anything to drink. The ghost boy was there. I couldn't blame the mead this time.

He was on the ground for once and looked like he was in the middle of pacing. The door opening must have distracted him, because when I saw him, he had one foot off of the ground, hands linked together behind his back, and his mouth was open like he'd been talking to himself.

Our eyes met, but he seemed to believe very quickly that I was as much a hallucination to him as he was to me, and he went right back to pacing. I took the chance to observe him a little longer.

He looked…incredibly tired, actually. Tired and upset and definitely not like the heroic teenage half-ghost he was supposed to be. He was a bundle of worn-out, worried energy. He hadn't looked like that six nights ago. In just under a week, he'd gone from mildly annoyed to this.

He paused when his stomach grumbled loudly.

"Oh my god, have you even eaten in all the time you've been hanging around here?"

I hadn't meant to say anything out loud, and he certainly wasn't expecting me to address him. After a few long moments of mostly silence where he tried to regain his composure (he'd screamed something incoherent and had nearly fallen flat on his ass), he finally found some words.

"You _can_ see me!"

"To be fair, I'm still pretty sure you're a delusion brought on by whatever was in my drink Saturday, but yes, I can see you," I replied.

"…You're one of, like, five, lady," he explained with a long, exhausted sigh. "The first one to not be an overly-enthusiastic kid, though. You know who I am, too?"

"Danny Phantom." At least at the moment he was. Should I tell him I knew about everything else? "Ghostly hero of Amity Park. Kind of a long way from home, you know?"

"Tell me about it."

His stomach interrupted again.

"How about _you_ tell me about it once we get you some food, kid," I suggested. He gave me an odd look.

"Umm… kind of seems like a strange thing to say to a ghost?" he noted with a nervous laugh. Did ghosts not eat in his world? I thought the meat lady ate in that first episode, but I honestly only remembered copious amounts of flying food.

"It's not exactly strange when your stomach sounds like a dragon," I explained with a gesture to his middle.

"It's not that…well…"

I took a breath, decided the whole keeping secrets thing was going to get frustrating to dance around, and explained a little bit more thoroughly.

"Ghosts may not have to eat, but half-ghosts who haven't even hit their last growth-spurt need food to do all of those lovely human things like _growing_ and _living_ , and I'm not about to let someone starve to death on the roof of my hotel, delusion or not."

He took a few minutes to pick his chin up from off of the ground, and a few more to figure out what to say in response to that.

* * *

 **Danny could either last significantly longer or significantly shorter than an average human without food, I figure.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey, this chapter is twice the length!**

 **...And the last one for a little while.**

* * *

"You live in a penthouse?"

"It's convenient."

Danny was currently following me (slowly) back inside. He'd decided quickly that he didn't have the energy to have the discussion about his secret with an adult who shouldn't know his human half from Adam, and accepted the offer of food. His stomach was growling in what sounded oddly like excitement.

"What floor is it on?"

That…seemed like an odd question. A penthouse is always located on the top floor. Unless he wanted the number…?

"Twelfth." A sigh of relief sounded behind me, and his pace down the stairs increased. "What's important about that?"

"Call me crazy, but I can't go any lower than, like, ten stories," he replied, confusion lacing his voice. "Tried every way I possibly could, and it's like I'm running into a ghost shield that isn't painful. It covers every square inch of what I'm starting to think is the entire world."

"Huh. Wonder what that's all about."

"I don't know, but it's causing me all kinds of problems." His stomach growled again. "You know how much information you can get from ten stories up? Very little."

You couldn't get much food ten stories up, either, I guessed.

We stepped into the spacious living area, and Danny's words and footsteps froze for a moment.

"Woah."

It was, admittedly, a rather nice place. Open-concept had been the idea when it was built, so the entire suite could be seen from any one area, save for the bedrooms and bath. This place was meant for parties and people with a lot of money.

I had tried to make it a bit cozier when I made the decision to live where I work, so couches that didn't quite match the original design had taken up a portion of the living space, and the décor was less sterile and more on the warm side of things. Certain things had to stay the way they were, though; every once in a while, I rented out the suite to someone who insisted on staying in it.

"You're loaded?"

"I own the hotel," I explained. "Not as loaded as you think."

"But still loaded."

"Comfortable."

I led him to the kitchen, sat him at the breakfast bar, and pulled out two of my ever-present cans of Spaghetti-Os.

"Okay, wait a minute," Danny deadpanned. "You own a hotel, live in its penthouse, and your dinner of choice is a cheap can of sad spaghetti?"

"It's delicious and no one can tell me otherwise," I argued. "Besides, when you live by yourself, cooking ends up being more of a chore than you'd like to go through. If you're home alone, do you cook, or order a pizza?"

He seemed to understand my logic. I plopped his bowl in the microwave first.

Three minutes later and he was digging into the bowl like he hadn't seen food in a week (which I was pretty sure was absolutely the case). I was honestly surprised he could eat the food here at all – for some reason, I was expecting the whole thing to just not work.

Okay, so the whole delusion was either incredibly strong, or not a delusion at all.

I ended up giving him half of my can before he felt satisfied. A glass of water turned into three, and then finally he was resting his head on the bar as he watched me finish off my own dinner.

"How come you can see me?"

I had genuinely thought it was the alcohol at first, but I was entirely sober tonight. I tried to come up with some idea as to why it was even possible for him to be seen at all, but it was late, and I was getting tired. There was no coming up with reasonable explanations right now when the moon was urging me to get to bed.

"No clue," I finally answered. "I'm not even sure how you can even be here. Still trying to wrap my head around your current existence."

"There were kids that could see me, but their parents couldn't," he continued. "I was starting to think I'd become like Youngblood, but then you could see me. Adults can't see Youngblood."

The name rang a distant bell that was probably three months off. "Maybe it's a belief thing," I ventured.

"Yeah, but you were still pretty sure I was a delusion out on the roof."

"Ah, true."

We fell into silence for a little bit. I gathered the dishes and set them to soak in the sink.

"How'd you know I'm only half ghost?"

His question sounded reluctant, like he didn't want to broach that topic but it was bugging him too much to let go. I didn't know how to answer it without making it entirely too complicated. Wasn't there some unspoken law about revealing to a kid that he was only a cartoon in your world?

"How about I explain that tomorrow, after you've had some sleep." And me. Sleep would help. Sleep would also let me put this off until I can figure out _what_ to say. "What's important right now is that you know that it's alright for you to relax. I'm not going to turn you in to any shady government agency."

After a minute of waiting for the reaction I expected (and realizing I didn't make clear enough what I meant), I decided to elaborate.

"I don't know how much energy it takes for you to stay in your ghost form, but I'm starting to think the bags under your eyes have something to do with not reverting back, among other things. You ever gone ghost this long?"

His eyes widened.

"…You _know_?"

The emphasis on the word was clear, but hesitant. I nodded, trying to appear as trusting and honest as I possibly could to a teenager who was very defensive around adults for perfectly good reasons. He didn't look like he was ready to drop his transformation, though, as if holding out would prevent me from learning more than he suspected I knew.

Okay, need to confirm how much I know. Got it.

"Your human identity is Danny Fenton. Don't worry about how I know that right now. I'll explain all of that tomorrow; you have my word."

His eyes darted from me to basically everywhere else in the room for a while, before whatever he was looking for wasn't found and he settled his gaze back on me.

"I've got a spare bedroom you can sleep in," I added. "No one else comes up here, not even the cleaning staff. You're as safe as you can be right now."

We had a silent staring contest. I won when he closed his eyes.

Those bright white-blue rings that appeared in his transformation in the cartoon were less like rings and more just light. Less blinding, too, and there was barely a sound to accompany them. They still traveled from his midsection up to his head and down to his feet, and they slowly revealed the blue jeans and red and white t-shirt I was expecting.

After a moment, I was staring at Danny Fenton.

Then I was trying to vault over the counter as he fell off of his stool.


	5. Chapter 5

All morning I had been going through ways that I could gently break the news to a teenage boy that his world in this world was a cartoon. I was coming up with nothing remotely helpful.

It had been so long since I was a teenager that trying to relate to one and understand what way to approach my promise was proving more difficult than I had originally thought. Thinking back to my high school days and the lackluster memories I could recall didn't help. Liking cartoons (any teenager had to relate to that somehow, right?) didn't help. Specifically liking _his_ didn't help, and that should have at least provided me with _something_.

I had grown out of any relatable element that would have told me that a teenager could handle the information if I broke it down in such and such a way.

I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration. This was becoming a headache.

Beyond worrying about how to tell him, I had ended up thinking about how it was even possible that he was in this situation. There had been one episode that had come up during my random review the other night where Danny and his friends had traversed different parts of the Ghost Zone through the use of a map. The Ghost Zone had so many doors, so many portals, that the possibility that one of them could have led here seemed plausible. His parents had punched a hole into another dimension – maybe this was just another one?

But it seemed as though all of those places he had traveled were linked to his world through their own timeline, which put a chink in my theory. Even if one door had led out of his and into this one, there were still a whole lot of things that didn't make sense, like why he hadn't gone back through the door a week ago, or why he seemed stuck 100 feet off the ground. My theory was a very loose guess at best.

"Lunch time, Karen."

I gave my secretary a thumbs-up, our secret and much more appropriate way of saying _about damn time_. He chuckled, returned the gesture, and went off to refill his coffee. My lunch would be taken upstairs, as per usual.

The express elevator took me straight to the penthouse. Along the ride, I watched the rest of the city slowly come into view through the glass. Floors passed, rooftops blazed in the noon sun, and suddenly the problems I had been going over in my head all morning scattered away and left one thought:

What the hell was so important about ten stories?

The elevator bell dinged, opening to a small foyer-like area just before the door to the suite. When I opened the door, a few things happened quickly; first, the much larger bundle of keys that happened to be in the same pocket as the room key I kept on a separate lanyard clattered on the hard floor. Second, Danny shouted from the bedroom I had put him up in after he'd collapsed last evening. Third, Mad-E came flying out of the room, ears flat and non-existent fur bristling along his nearly-bare back as he looked over his shoulder, disdain for the offending reaction to his presence clear in his one good eye.

I sighed, picked up my keys, and moved to comfort my poor cat.

Danny was still sleeping by the time I had to be downstairs that morning, and by the looks of it, he had still been asleep until my unfortunately noisy entrance. Mad-E seemed to have sought out Danny's unusual presence in an attempt to make a friend in my absence. A hairless cat, especially one with one less-than-natural eye, was not likely what he expected to wake up to. Mad-E had a wonderful habit of sleeping on or right next to people, regardless of how much of a cat person they insisted they were. To him, everyone was a cat person, because he was a people cat.

Sufficiently appeased, the hairless wonder trotted off to his food bowl. I went down the hall to see how Danny was holding up, only to meet him in the hallway as he tumbled out in a mess of dazed teenager.

"Wha-what happened? What was that? Where's the ghost?"

I chuckled despite myself. He really was quite like his cartoon counterpart.

"In order, you woke up to something you didn't expect, that was my cat, and the ghost is standing in front of me," I ticked off.

"…That was a _cat_?"

"Sphinx breed, or hairless, depending on what you prefer. Hypo-allergenic. Keeps me and my guests from sneezing. Would you like a proper introduction?"

He seemed to process that slowly, and then it was like he remembered suddenly that he was not where he was meant to be, and the weight of it sagged his shoulders.

I felt for him. This whole situation probably seemed hopeless from his perspective.

"Come on; it's lunch time," I said, trying to break the silence. "I've got less than half an hour before I have to be back downstairs for work."

He nodded somewhat numbly.

This time, I made sandwiches. I figured he could use a bit of everything, and I needed to use up the lettuce before it went completely limp anyway. I couldn't recall if the show had noted whether he liked mayo or not (I did), so I just set it out on the breakfast counter and passed him the open sandwich on a plate. Mustard followed. Ketchup for good measure. Hell, I decided everything should just stay out on the bar.

"Add or subtract whatever you need to," I told him. He looked mildly overwhelmed.

"Uh…thanks."

He added an extra slice of ham and picked off the tomato slice, and mayo found its way onto the bread. A quick scan of the spread again told him he didn't need anything more. He put the two halves together and took a bite.

When I figured he was satisfied, I put my own together. Mad-E hopped nimbly onto the counter and seated himself on the end, paw immediately to his face to begin his ritual cleaning.

"Is that thing really a cat?"

Danny's question made me huff in mock-hurt. It was a jab I was used to, of course – when people decided they were getting a cat, it normally was of the fluffy variety.

"Mad-E is as much a cat as any other. He's just nearly hairless and has a bad eye."

"Wait, _Maddie_?"

"Mad- _E_ ," I corrected, stressing the hyphen a bit harder. "Short for Mad-Eye Moody. I was going through a _Harry Potter_ phase when I got him."

Danny stared at me blankly. Right; His world likely had an alternate version of the most popular book series of all time.

"Character from the series," I clarified. "Has a false eye that has a tendency to be a bit mad. Figured it fit him."

"Sorry," he finally said, waving it off. "Someone I know got a cat. He named it Maddie, which also happens to be my mom's name, which he knows, and it's weird on so many levels."

Someone he knew got a cat and named it after his mom…

Oh.

"Ooooh."

Either I had missed that, or I hadn't seen that episode.

"Yeah."

We took a few more bites of sandwich, and I was starting to think about shortening Mad-E's name to just Mad. I didn't know how much he'd appreciate it, given that I had started calling him Mad- _E_ when Mad- _Eye_ became a noise he refused to associate with his name, and Moody just seemed rude.

He mrowed as if he knew what I was thinking. I sent him a look. Moody could certainly _fit_ him, though.

"Oh, hey. That reminds me."

I turned back to Danny to find that in the middle of addressing me, he had noticed mayo on his finger, and he popped it into his mouth for a moment in lieu of a napkin.

"I never got your name," he finished as he inspected his finger.

"Karen." This time he blanked. "What?"

"…Just Karen? No title, no last name, no…?" He gestured as if there was something else he couldn't think of to fill in the space.

"Wilds, if you're so curious," I shrugged. "But Karen's fine. I only get called Ms. Wilds in business meetings or when the brand goons come to tell me what I'm doing wrong."

"Guess I'm just used to calling most adults by their last name."

"School kind of pounds it into you, huh?"

An alarm sounded from my watch. Five minutes.

"Damn, that goes fast." Danny raised an eyebrow at my slip as I covered my mouth. I shook my head after a beat. "Oh, whatever – you're a teenager. I'm sure you've heard more colorful words."

"...Like _sacre bleu_?"

It took me a moment.

" _Punny_ , Danny. Very punny."

That put a light smile on his face.

"It's kind of my specialty."

I picked up the rest of my sandwich and stopped short of shoving it completely into my mouth as I put things back in the fridge. The express elevator was quick, but not quick enough for me to relax if I wanted to get down there in time to snatch a couple of Sarah's infamous buckeye chocolates before the budget meeting started. That woman was an absolute wizard when it came to sweets. It always surprised me that finance was what she actually enjoyed doing.

"I'll be back," I told him when my mouth was free. "Things should wrap up at six unless I have any complaints to address. You need anything, raid the fridge, the cabinets, whatever suits you." I should save a couple of buckeyes for him. "I'm going to lock the door as a precaution, but you shouldn't have to worry about that with the whole ghost powers thing."

"Yeah," he nodded sheepishly. "…I think I'm going to go out and see if I can't find anything else. I don't like just sitting around."

"Just don't overdo it," I warned. "If you pass out somewhere out there and end up on the crazy barrier instead of a building, I can't exactly go up and get you."

"Right."

"And I haven't forgotten that I owe you an explanation about how I know things I shouldn't know. I promise, once I'm done with work, you'll get the whole story. The explanation is complicated; I don't want to throw it all at you and then leave you here to sort it out."

He nodded, but didn't say anything. Yeah, he was worried about that. I didn't blame him.

I was halfway out the door when I remembered the ride up in the elevator.

"While you're out, though, I think it might be a good idea to focus on the barrier situation. I've got a theory that it has something to do with why you're stuck here."

* * *

 **Mild shenanigans ensue.**

 **I'll tell you what, though - the ten-stories deal in the prompt really tripped me up for a while. Pretty sure I've finally got my plan for it figured out, but I'm finishing up that idea development before this moves too much farther. For now, Karen spends some time getting to know Danny beyond his cartoon version. I have fun with it.**


End file.
